In the autumn of 1760, after the capitulation of Montreal, General Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers, the New Hampshire Ranger, to receive the submission of the French forts on the further lakes. On the 13th of September Rogers embarked at Montreal with two hundred of his men: he made his way up the St. Lawrence, and coasted the northern shore of Lake Ontario, noting, as he went, that Toronto, where the French had held Fort Rouillé, was ‘a most convenient place for a factory, and that from thence we may very easily settle the north side of Lake Erie’.[4] He crossed the upper end of Lake Ontario to Fort Niagara, already in British possession; and, having taken up supplies, carried his whale boats round the falls and launched them on Lake Erie. Along the southern side of that lake he went forward to Presque Isle, where Bouquet was in command of the English garrison; and, leaving his men, he went himself down by Fort le Bœuf, the French Creek river, and Venango to Fort Pitt, or Pittsburg, as Fort Duquesne had been renamed by John Forbes in honour of Chatham. His instructions were to carry dispatches to General Monckton at Pittsburg, and to take orders from him for a further advance. Returning to Presque Isle at the end of October, he went westward along Lake Erie, making for Detroit. No English force had yet been in evidence so far to the West. On the 7th of November he encamped on the southern shore of Lake Erie, at a point near the site of the present city of Cleveland, and there he was met by a party of Ottawa Indians ‘just arrived from Detroit’.[5] [Sidenote: His meeting with Pontiac.] [Sidenote: Surrender of Detroit to the English.]